As the Internet of Things trend, commonly referred to as IoT, grows, so does the number of objects or things that can now be described as being connected. This creates an increasing inventory of a wide variety of assets that entities, whether they are families, multinational corporations, or government institutions, have to keep track of. As such, there will be a strong need for what is referred to as direction finding features on mobile devices. Put simply, there will be a need for a tool that allows people, automated processes, and other entities to physically find things, a tool that shows a “user” which direction and how far to go to find the item of interest. For example, new features in the Bluetooth specification enable direction finding features in devices. Similar features, tools, and apps are likely to evolve for other standards.
However, as is the case with Bluetooth, these features will likely require that the device being used have significant radio frequency (RF) capabilities which, in turn, may require that the device have multiple antennas for gathering specific and accurate raw angular data. For example, the direction finding feature may require that the mobile device have an antenna array in order to locate a target asset. One or two antennas may be placed at the corners of a device, such as a smartphone. However, performance of these antennas is likely to be significantly hampered by movement and blockage from a user's hand or body, and by structures around the user, all of which degrade RF visibility of the device in a given area. In addition, small and constrained form factors of many mobile devices limits antenna size and compromises control of the gain and directionality of antennas in the device.
What is needed is a system that enables a mobile device to take advantage of new direction finding tools. It would also be desirable for the system to scale so that an increasing number of devices may be used to locate similarly increasing number of objects and assets in the expanding IoT environment. Additionally, it would be desirable to shift the processing burden of executing direction finding tools off the mobile device to a more efficient and capable apparatus.